


The Gift

by Sophia_Bee



Series: X-men Canon Compliant Fics [2]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Charles-centric, Elvis - Freeform, Erik has Issues, Gay Mutant Road Trip, Holocaust, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Sex, Slow Dancing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-12
Updated: 2014-10-12
Packaged: 2018-02-20 19:55:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2440991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sophia_Bee/pseuds/Sophia_Bee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set during the mutant recruitment road trip(s). Charles learns some of Erik's past and decides to give him a gift.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Gift

There are some people who tell you about themselves right away, announcing who they are loudly to the point that Charles doesn’t even need his telepathy to know almost everything about them. He hates these kinds of people because when he does slip up and use his powers, they almost always end up leaving him with a headache.

Erik is not one of these people.

Erik is quiet. Too quiet, and this makes Charles endlessly curious, to the point that the man’s steadfast silence sometimes leaves Charles feeling like he’s going to crawl out of his skin. The brief glimpse into Erik’s mind tells Charles that the smooth, cool silence that Erik carries with him is far from the truth, but he never betrays this. He just stays on the edges of everything, observing in a controlled, detached manner.

Charles is a nervous ball of energy. This is a normal state of being for him, always busy, always doing something, but around Erik he feels magnified, one hundred times himself, and he finds that he talks a little too quickly and his hands seem to have forgotten what hands do. They often stray towards Erik, touching him. Fingers on his forearm. A hand clasping his shoulder. A touch on the small of his back as they leave a room. Erik never seems to notice. Charles finds himself thrumming with tension as his fingers stray, waiting for the other man to turn with anger snapping in his eyes, but Erik never reacts, just remains quiet, as if he hasn’t noticed that Charles fingers seem to have poor discipline.

All of this is why the first night of a several day road trip Charles is surprised to find himself being backed up, step by step, towards the cheap wood door of their motel room until he feels its hardness along his back and Erik is pressing his full weight against him.

“What?” Charles manages to gasp as Erik’s face hovers above him.

“You don’t want this?” Erik asks, his eyes filled with confusion, wondering if he’s misread all the touches.

Charles shakes his head. He wants this. More than he’d realized until the moment Erik had turned and captured his wrist in his big, square hand, causing Charles to shiver in a deep, entirely untoward manner, “I just didn’t know if you….”

Erik smiles at Charles, a wide, soulless grin that is entirely unreadable.

“This isn’t my first rodeo.”

Charles can’t help but huff out a little laugh at the American colloquialism coming from the German. Erik’s thin, reserved mouth descends on Charles and it’s open and hot and sloppy and entirely betrays the control that Erik exhibits. That kiss, so desperate that Charles knows immediately that Erik is hanging by a thread, rips all semblance of thought from Charles, who moans and returns the effort in favor.

They’re hit the road the next day, Erik at the wheel, as unreadable as ever. Charles leans back in the leather seat of the rental car and watches the other man. Nothing in the way Erik holds himself betrays that this was the man who had fucked Charles half senseless in the hotel bed last night. Charles shifts his weight in the seat, his sore muscles a pleasant reminder.

It’s a hot day and the road is long and straight. It’s an unfortunate characteristic of Midwest topography that roads can run in long single lines, lined by miles and miles of wheat fields with an occasional small semi-dying town interrupting them. Charles licks his lips and they feel dry and cracked and still a little swollen. Eriks appears to like kissing Charles because last night he kept finding Charles’ mouth with his own again and again, and when they were done, stinking and sweat covered, instead of getting up like most spontaneous fucks might have, Erik had pulled Charles tight against him and kissed him so slowly and sweetly that Charles had felt tears spring up in his eyes.

Erik doesn’t talk. This doesn’t surprise Charles because in the short period of time he’s known him, it hasn't been hard to figure out that Erik isn’t a talker in general. Even if he did talk, Charles doesn’t know what he would say in return, so in a way he’s glad for the silence. It leaves him alone to replay the events of the night before until Charles finds himself starting to ache in both and unpleasant and pleasant way and forces himself to think about other things, like the stock market and the fact that part of Westchester’s east wing roof needs replacing soon.

Charles rolls his window down and the dry, hot wind blows across his face, and his mouth and tongue feel parched, then he glances over at Erik, who is clearly taking his job of driving seriously. He has two hands gripping the wheel, ten o’clock and two o’clock, and a steadfast intense gaze on the road in front of him. Charles finds himself wishing the man would glance over at him and maybe Charles could either look adorable enough or do something dirty enough, like place a finger in his mouth and draw it out slowly, that he could gain a small smile, or at least a quick scold from Erik. s

After a couple hours of silence, Charles finds himself feeling fidgety and wanting to put something between himself and Erik, so he starts talking, not caring about the mild look of irritation that crosses Erik’s face. He suspect the other man isn’t used to casual conversation, but he’s trapped in a car with Charles Xavier, whose baseline is verbose.

He starts to chatter, talking about nothing in general, just telling Erik stories that he might want to tell him if they were able to meet in a different way. He talks about growing up and feeling alone, how Sharon cared more for her gin than she did for her son, more than he really intends to reveal, enough to make him feel tinged with melancholy. Forgodsake, what is it about this man that makes Charles want to tell him everything? It bothers him a vague way that Erik, who is so controlled and apparently immovable, seems to be breaking down all of Charles’ barriers.

“Tell me about your mother.” Charles finally says, feeling awkward that it’s only his voice interrupting the silence.

“My mother is dead,” Erik says curtly. That’s the end of that discussion. While Charles had a mother to feel abandoned by, Erik doesn’t have that luxury.

He moves onto more bring stuff, like school and how he had always been the outside, the boy genius, too young for his peers to care about getting to know, too smart. He found himself just as lonely at school as he was at home, and again, why is all of this sadness coming out? Surely he can find a happy memory to share with the man sitting across the car from him who appears not to care. Charles reaches into his brain and finds one. It’s a secret, happy memory that he’s kept for himself, never having told anyone, but he decides to share, because he thinks that Erik will understand.

He tells him about Jack.

It’s not a long story. He was a boy who started at the school when Charles was close to graduating, but because Charles was younger than his classmates, he and Jack were the same age. They connected over lunch one day and their mutual love of philosophy, and for the first time Charles had a friend. And more than that, because it turned out that Jack LIKED him.

“He was my first kiss, my first everything.” Charles says quietly, not even looking over at Erik anymore. His head is filled with Jack, his blond hair, the way the sun warmed his skin as he lay on the deck of the Xavier pool, and how grateful Charles felt for his mother being at yet another charity event as he let his hands run across the other boy’s arms, then chest, full of wonder at how good another person could feel under his fingertips.

Charles doesn’t see that Erik is actually looking at him now, glancing over to take in his profile, the glancing back to the road.

“There was this time,” Charles says almost absently, more to himself than to Erik, “the school was having its dance and of course Jack and I couldn’t go together, but we had both found dates. Some poor girls who were way too hopeful about what going to a random dance meant for their futures. I thought it would be okay, but it was awful. I spent the whole night dancing with whatshername. Jenny or Betty, or something bland like that, but staring at Jack, and all I wanted was to be in his arms.”

Charles closes his eyes. He hates this feeling, that he can never get what he wants, can never have something as simple as a dance with the boy he loves. His voice trails off and he stares out the window again,not really knowing what else to say.

“And?” Erik says into the silence, causing Charles to jump. Charles’ mouth feels dry and he had no idea Erik was even listening. He turns his head to gaze across the car at the other man who is looking at him expectantly, as if he wanted to hear how all of this ends, and suddenly Charles isn’t really sure if he wants to tell him.

“At some point during the dance, Jack grabs me and tells the girls we have to go outside, for a smoke or a nip from the flask he was carrying, or something. Then he drags me through this door, and it was behind the stage where the band was playing, and it was just us, back behind these heavy velvet curtains, and I can remember how it smelled like dust, you know, like the backstage of every school play you’ve ever been in.” Charles doesn’t see Erik wince at his words because Erik has never been in a school play, “and Jack’s cologne, and the vodka we had been drinking out of flasks, and he took me into his arms, and I remember thinking that finally I could be with him, and we danced.”

Charles can still feel the way Jack felt pressed against his chest, the way his arms wrapped around him, and how it felt to get this small slice of normalcy for just a few moments, to just sway together to the music, holding each other. He’s lost in the memory for a long moment until he manages to shake himself and bring himself back to the car and the landscape drifting by.

“Did you ever go to school dances in Germany?” Charles asks conversationally, looking for something to say, and Erik’s response fills Charles with regret that he didn’t think before asking the question.

“I didn’t have much chance to dance,”

Charles feels himself reeling. The ghetto. The camps. How could he forget.

“I’m so sorry,” Charles says, and it takes all his effort not to reach across the car and touch Erik, but considering that the man is practically vibrating and his knuckles are white as they grip the steering wheel, he decides to keep the safety of space between.

“I don’t want your pity.” Erik says quietly, back to not looking at Charles, keeping his eyes on the road, only the tightness of his mouth betraying his pain.

“Okay.”

They drive on in silence. Charles feels a bead of sweat rolling down the side of his neck and his hair is damp from sweat. rHe pulls out a handkerchief and wipes his brow, shrugs off his suit jacket and throws it into the back of the car. The heat is dry and endless, the car is silent, just the sound of the tires on the road, the air whooshing by.

“What happened to Jack?” Erik says after a long while, breaking the silence. Charles looks over, blinking in surprise. Erik wants to hear more so Charles decides he’ll tell him the rest of the story. The part that hurts.

“I graduated. We met up that summer and I thought it would be forever. We got caught.”

Charles can still remember that day. They’d been at Jack’s family vacation home, his parents were supposed to arrive the next day so they had the whole place to themselves. Charles had driven himself up in one of the Xavier family cars and they’d spent the entire day at the lake, swimming, splashing, lying in the sun. It was one of those long, lazy summer days that never seems to end and Charles remembers being blissfully happy.

He and Jack had ended up on the couch in the formal livingroom, kissing each other, pulling at each others swim trunks until they were thrown on the floor, and Charles still feel the ache of how good Jack’s sun warmed skin had felt under his fingertips. They were kissing lazily, taking their time, Jack stopping to remark on the freckles that scattered across Charles’ shoulder, burying his nose in the crook of Charles neck, kissing his way across his clavicle. They had all the time in the world, until they didn’t and Jack’s mother was standing in the doorway of the living room, her hand clasped to her mouth, ever hair in her bouffant in place, a string of pearls sitting in the hollow of her neck. Charles can’t remember much after that, just the hot sting of tears running down his cheeks and how he’d begged them to not hurt Jack, and Jack’s father yelling, beads of sweat on his forehead, his face bright red. Charles had sobbed the entire drive back to Westchester. He never saw Jack again.

“He’s married with kids now. Running for office.”

“Oh,” Erik says, and from his tone Charles knows he understands.

They reach their destination, which isn’t actually a destination, but a stop on their way to somewhere else. Erik stops the car and gets out, not saying a word, goes to the trunk and pulls out their suitcases. Charles slides out the passenger side door, the gravel in the parking lot crunching under his dress shoes that are now coated with a thin layer of dust, a stiff wind whipping across his face. He squints in the bright filtered of the sun that’s low on the rolling hills, about the slip under the horizon. The motel is an anomaly standing out in the endless fields of wheat, part of a one stoplight town that they decided to stop in.

He goes to the main desk and checks them in, using the stack of travelers checks Moira had shoved at him before they left. The receptionist is a young woman with too much makeup on and she barely gives him a second glance as she chews gum eager to get back to the vapid popular romance novel she has laid out on the desk. If Charles bothered to look into her mind he would see that she has dreams of finding the man who will sweep her off her feet and take her away from this desolate place, that she reads these romances because she wants to be anywhere but here. In the meantime, she works at this motel and spends her weekends drinking at the local bar and fucking Skip, who has a good job working for his dad at the gas station in town. She thinks she’ll probably marry Skip when he asks her, because what option does she have, but she still dreams of getting out of the midwest, of being saved, of being someone. Charles sees none of this. He just pays for their room, a double with two twin beds, and he suspects that if things keep going in the same direction they have, one of those beds won’t be used.

He turns to find Erik standing with a suitcase in each hand, watching him, a small smile on his face, and Charles feels his chest clench tight.

That night is a repeat of the last, with Erik advancing on Charles the moment the motel door closes, muttering something about waiting for this all goddamn day, and Charles can’t quite deal with what that might mean, except that he’s about to be thoroughly fucked for the second night in a row. This time he meets Erik half way, kissing him with an hunger he hadn’t quite recognized had been lurking under the surface as they drove, and Erik’s mouth is equally urgent on his.

They manage to make it to the bed, tearing off each other’s clothing, fingers finding bare skin and it doesn’t take long for Charles to be on all fours, his head hanging down and dripping with sweat. His hand slips between his legs and pumps his cock as Erik grips his hips and slams into him with the same intensity that Erik seems to do everything with. They finally collapse on the bed together, a slick, sweaty mess, Erik muttering something in German in Charles’ ear, heavy against Charles back. Just like the night before, Erik rolls over and pulls Charles close and kisses him, languid and slow, almost like he’s memorizing Charles in case Charles disappears, and Charles doesn’t know what that’s about. Or maybe he does. They lie together, pressed from chest to thigh, still hot but not wanting to move, and at some point Erik looks at Charles, his eyes serious, and he whispers,

“I’m sorry about Jack,”

Charles is about to give his standard answer, that it’s all okay, that it was a long time ago, but the look on Erik’s face is so open that he can’t tell him anything but the truth, which is that all these years later, losing his first love hurt. Charles’ eyes shine with tears that then spill out onto his cheeks and he finds himself in the entirely ridiculous position of sobbing into Erik’s chest about a love he was never going to be able to hold onto in the first place.

Erik must be a master at compartmentalization because the drive the next day is a repeat of the previous, with Erik taking his job of navigating seriously, maybe too seriously, eaving Charles slouched across from him, wondering if they’re ever going to actually talk about what’s going on. Any of his other lovers might have spared him a glance, shot him a shy, secret smile, reached across the car to rest their hand on his thigh, it’s warmth radiating through the fabric of his nicely tailored trousers, making him want to make a pit stop somewhere for a quick shag. Not Erik. It’s like daylight brings a wall between them, leaving Charles with no distraction from his own thoughts and the specter of Jack that’s now lurking there.

“Did you have a first love, a first dance?” Charles asks, wanting to do something besides sit and let his thoughts run circles in his brain.

“Charles,” Erik says reproachfully, his mouth tight again, and Charles almost knows what’s coming before the words leave Erik’s mouth, “My family and I were put in the ghetto when I was eleven. I was more concerned with bread than love. I was fourteen when they sent me to Auschwitz where I became Shaw’s pet project and watched him shoot my mother. Love wasn’t something I was allowed.”

Straightforward. Charles cannot say anything more. Charles wants to cry and as his eyes fill with tears, he turns away from Erik and returns to staring out the window. He hates this world they live in where people hurt children like Erik, where they are more worried about food than the normal things that happen when you’re a teenager. He wants to punch something, to stop the car and run into one of the neverending fields of wheat and yell at the injustice of it until his voice is hoarse. He is consumed with righteous outrage and he understands the rage that always seems to lurk under Erik’s surface in a way he hasn’t before.

“They did try to make things normal for us,” Erik says softly, breaking the silence again, and Charles turns his head to stare at the man sitting across from him, amazed that he’s willing to talk more about what happened to him, what was done to him. “The council. They put on socials and dances, but I was too young and they were really for the people in the ghetto who had more. My family had very little. I never got to dance.”

Charles blinks back tears at the amount of pain Erik Lehnsherr carries around.

The landscape changes as they head south, turning from fields to desert. They have one more night before they reach their destination. That night Charles grabs Erik’s wrist, the one that holds the inventory numbers the Nazis gave him on his skin, marked like an animal, their property. He traces his fingers over the tattoo over and over again, and the tears that he’s been holding back all day spill over, and Charles tastes salt.

Erik is tense at Charles’ touch and he growls at him, his face a mask of anger, “Don’t you dare pity me.”

“I don’t,” Charles murmurs, kissing the tattoo, willing it away along with everything it means, wanting Erik to have been able to fall in love and go to dances and steal kisses on moonlit nights, like any other boy. His whole body aches with the injustice of it and Charles would give up everything he has in life to make things different for this man, to take some of his pain, “I don’t,” he says again, “I hurt for you.”

Erik blinks. His eyes are shining in the moonlight.

“Mein gott, Charles,” Erik mutters, then pulls Charles up and crushes his mouth to his.

They arrive at the Nevada brothel the next day, a ramshackle building in the middle of nowhere, where they find the mutant they’ve been looking for. She’s sultry, glancing at the two men stretched out on the bed before her, telling them she’s happy to do the both for but they don’t get a discount and if they want to do her, the price will be even higher. Charles smiles secretly because he’s not interested in what she offers but what else she can do, and that’s when they tell her it’s safe, so instead of spreading her legs, she spreads her wings.

Her name is Angel and she’s a really a kid, although she knows too much about the world and can quote them the price of a street corner blow job off the top of her head. There’s not a lot for her in the brothel so she agrees to come with them. She spreads across the back seat with a stack of comic books, a handful of licorice and a few bottles of soda, and Erik decides he’ll drive the sixteen hours it will take for them to reach Vegas straight through. Charles says he can drive as well, but Erik looks doubtful, says he was warned about this by Moira and it’s best for him to be the one behind the wheel, and Charles frowns a little and pretends to be more perturbed than he is. If Erik drives than Charles can spend his time stealing glances at the other man.

Charles suspects that one of the reasons Erik doesn’t want to stop is that Angel is now an interloper and with her tagging along there’s no reason to delay their return to CIA headquarters. Charles doesn’t disagree but he also finds that he misses Erik’s touch and longs to reach across the car in the middle of the night as they drive through the Nevada desert and smooth a finger along his jaw, trace his shoulder, place his palm on his thigh, because he misses him. What the fuck, Xaviar?

They reach Vegas just as the sun is starting to rise and pull into the rental car place at teh airport. Angel is still sleeping in the back seat. Charles wakes to find a strip of drool has crusted on his cheek and he absently rubs at it, his eyes blurry with sleep and out of focus. He blinks slowly to find Erik is watching him, his gray-green eyes intent, and Charles feels himself start to blush and he realizes Erik had been watching him sleep.

Charles is about to say something cheeky, like ‘did you like what you saw,’ or maybe he would just reach across the car and pull Erik to him and murmur in his ear that he missed him too, and it had been too many hours since they’d been able to touch each other, and they could steal a quick kiss, but just at that moment Angel stirs, her head popping up, rubbing her eyes and asking if they’re there yet.

The rental car is turned in and by the afternoon they are all on a plane heading back to to the CIA headquarters, Angel insisting on the window seat, squeaking that she’s never been on a plane before, and any plan Charles had to put her between the two of them dissipates. Erik and Charles end up pressed next to each other in the small confines of the airplane, Erik gripping the armrests, refusing to look at Charles, his mouth set in that same grim line that only seems to disappear when he reaches for Charles at night and lets go of everything he holds inside.

Charles dares a glance at Erik now and then and every time just looking at Erik hurts in a way that Charles has never experienced before. This man rips him apart in a way that is terrifying and joyful and the same time and he wants to give him everything, every single part of him, and how can this be after just a few days? Charles finds his thoughts wandering to the pain Erik carries and how his stories of childhood are about being hungry and being tortured and how no one has ever been able to give him any normalcy.

They return to headquarters late and Erik doesn’t say anything to Charles except that he’s going to turn in, and for the first time in days Charles sleeps alone, and this means he doesn’t sleep but tosses and turns and misses Erik’s warmth next to him. Sometime over this night, maybe a few hours before dawn, and Charles lies with his eyes open,staring at the ceiling, missing Erik, he comes up with a plan. He wants to give something to Erik that can just be Erik’s, something besides the revenge Erik carries as all his own, and he knows what it will be.

It’s an easy plan and it doesn’t take much to find what he needs once they return to headquarters. Just a few requests, a little help from Moira, and it’s all set up. He sees Erik that day and things are back to where they were before the road trip, Erik lurking on the edges, watching, quiet, and Charles feeling like his silence is going to make him crawl out of skin. He finds Erik in the hallway at some point and puts a hand on his arm, watching as the other man flinches, tilts his head up to look Erik squarely in the face, and for a moment Erik’s control slips and he looks desperate and sad, and Charles aches.

“Come to my room tonight, my friend.” Charles says softly, kindly. Erik nods his agreement then they break apart, as if the conversation never happened.

Charles nervousness is magnified the rest of the day and he finds that he can’t concentrate. He tries to read, pulls out his chess board to practice moves and think of strategy, decides to think through some math equations in his head, but nothing keeps him from feeling jumpy and out of sorts, and like he misses Erik so much it hurts.

Finally the evening comes and after dinner, Charles says casually he’s going to retire for the night instead of joining Raven, Angel and the others in the lounge, and moments later there’s a knock on the door. Charles pads over the door and opens it only to have Erik practically push himself through the doorway, his hands going to Charles’ shoulders, dipping to capture Charles’ lips while kicking the door shut behind him.

“God, I’ve wanted this so badly for the last few days,” Erik groans, kissing Charles, fast and sloppy and Charles feels his head start to spin and it takes all his rational thought to push at Erik’s chest and slow everything down. He knows where this is going and he wants to give Erik his gift before the end up fucking each other senseless yet again.

“Wait,” Charles gasps, and Erik freezes, holding entirely still, his whole vibrating,

“Charles?” Erik asks, and Charles can hear fear in the way the other man says his name, and he knows that Erik will never feel that he is allowed to have anything, so he smooths his hand across the expanse of his chest in a soothing motion.

“Shhhhh,” Charles whispers, “I am yours. All yours.” The words come out before he even thinks about what they mean, but he knows that they are true, so he doesn’t try to take them back or make them any less than they are. Charles allows them to sit between them.

Erik’s breath hitches. He bends down to kiss Charles again but Charles turns his head and pushes at his chest again.

“No,” Charles says quickly, “I mean, yes, I want you. I always want you, but I have something I want to give you.”

Erik blinks, watching Charles, “A gift?” he says, as if he doesn’t really know what to do with what Charles is saying, as if people don’t give gifts to Erik Lehnsherr.

“Yes,” Charles says, “A gift.” He steps away from Erik and moves across the room where a box sits on the small government issue steelcase desk. Charles can feel Erik’s eyes following him. Charles unlatches the box and it’s a small record player that Moira had found for him. He turns the record player on then lifts the needle from it’s stand, placing it on the spinning surface, listening the the slight scratch as song starts, filling the room.

_Wise men say…_

Charles turns back to Erik and holds out his hand.

_Only fools rush in...._

“You never got a dance like I did,” Charles says, unable to contain a smile as he watches Erik’s eyes widen, “would you dance with me now?”

_but I can’t help…_

Erik’s mouth hangs open and he stares at Charles for a long moment.

_falling in love with you…_

“Yes,” Erik gasps, closing the distance between them, taking Charles into his arms, and Charles leans his forehead into the taller man’s chest and inhales his scent. Erik’s arms come around him and Charles can feel that they’re shaking as the pull him closer, and the two men press together and sway.

“I can’t change the world,” Charles says into the fabric of Erik’s sweater that soft against his face, “I can’t go back and erase what they did to you,”

“Mein gott, Charles, you don’t have to. That’s not your job” Erik gasps into his hair, his arms pull Charles tighter to his chest, and then he mutters more German into his ear, sounding utterly wrecked.

“I know,” Charles says, his voice raw, “God, I know that. But I can give you this. I want to give you this.” Charles says softly, “I can give you a dance.”

_~fin~_

**Author's Note:**

> just in case you live under a rock, the song at the end is Elvis Presley's I Can't Help Falling In Love.


End file.
